Want to know how normal "cord cutting" is these days? Here's a peek behind the Ars Orbiting HQ curtain: when we decided we wanted to review the new line of TiVo DVRs—called Roamio—after the company's fall announcement, we hit a bit of a snag. Out of the entire Ars staff, only four of us had current cable subscriptions.

Can you blame us? It's easier than ever to lose that relationship with Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, or the local monopoly cable company. You can opt for a Roku, a Boxee, an Apple TV, or maybe something a little risqué like Aereo. And even if you don't want a dedicated piece of hardware, all laptops, desktops, and mobile devices can become your "TV" through the endless amount of streaming content apps.

All of those options have limitations, but regular ol' cable with a DVR does too. The streamers lack the ability to access everything,let alone record it. Cable doesn't let you watch what you want, when you want without the DVR... and even then it's not easy to take that content with you. (Though with emerging initiatives like Comcast's Xfinity TV Go or Cox TV Connect, that problem may soon go away—for a price.)

This somewhat new divide is where the TiVo Roamio may fit. Make no mistake about it, the Roamio (and TiVo in general) is firmly entrenched in the old cable regime. You'll need to work with your local provider in order to get the full TiVo experience. However, just because coaxial is involved doesn't mean that TiVo is limited to the living room these days. Through the streaming capabilities of its Roamio line (minus the regular Roamio, which is compatible with separate Stream hardware), the latest generation of TiVos can transcode recordings and push them to your iOS devices. As Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson reported, streaming only worked within your local LAN at launch, but the company pushed out an October update so that Roamio boxes could send content over the Internet to connected Apple devices anywhere. The Internet streaming is adaptive too, pacing itself to the available upload bandwidth of your connection (throttling as low as 290kbps and as high as 2Mbps).

Is that enough for members of the post-cable society to come back? Is it enough to keep us dinosaurs here? How does it stack up to your local cable company's default offering? Find a comfy spot on the couch and let's talk TV together.

The Specs

For this review, TiVo provided Ars with its top-line Roamio Pro. We also purchased a Roamio Pro to test alongside the review unit. The Roamio Pro has 3TB of storage, good enough for 450 hours of HD content (or 3,500 hours of SD). The Pro also has six tuners allowing for six simultaneous recordings from one CableCard. All that space comes at a price though. The Pro will run you $599.99 upfront, and new TiVo users will then have to pay either a monthly $14.99 fee or a one-time $499 fee for the service. This is where most existing DVR users dismiss TiVo. Perhaps you get your DVR for free, or it costs you $10 a month. TiVo wants money for hardware and for service, and that makes it comparatively more expensive by a long shot.

After this section, we will use "Roamio" interchangeably with the Roamio Pro. But know that there are two other members of the Roamio line: the Plus (1TB) and the regular Roamio (500GB). The Plus can store 150 HD hours and also comes with the ability to record six shows at once. It's priced at $399.99 plus service. The regular Roamio can handle 75 HD hours and record four shows at once. It will cost you $199.99 plus service. (Additional specs are available here along with more detailed pricing information; returning TiVo customers can expect more service options).

For a quick snapshot of how these fit into the larger DVR landscape, Wired's Roberto Baldwin compiled a handy chart when the devices were first announced (read more of his analysis here):

When considering the Roamio's abilities and monthly cost, these upfront dollar signs may frighten you.

Roberto Baldwin, Wired

At the moment, the Roamio is only compatible with cable TV service and Verizon's FiOS TV service. Satellite TV and AT&T's U-Verse are not yet supported (and over-the-air is supported only in the entry-level Roamio model—the Pro and Plus require cable).

TiVo unboxing

Cool box, TiVo.

What you see is what you get: the TiVo box, an AC power plug, two AAA batteries, a controller, and reference materials.

I'm a fan of Ethernet ports. (Just in from the editor's desk: because of that pun, this will be the last review I'm allowed to do.)

Did you like the five color indicator scheme of the TiVo Premiere? Well, about that...

The TiVo Roamio comes with all sorts of capabilities, but very few physical items areincluded. There's a remote control, a pair of AAA batteries for said remote, an AC power cable, reference literature, and the TiVo box itself. Be warned, first-time TiVo users, the advertising doesn't tell you that you'll need at least four more items—not including a TV—for the box to function at all: an Ethernet cable, AV component cables of your choosing, a trusty coaxial cable, and a CableCard from your local provider. (If you're unlucky, as we were, you'll also need a few additional items.)

The remote is virtually unchanged from the TiVo Premiere remote. It's still peanut shaped and about half the size of your standard cable box offering. It still has all of the standard TiVo buttons. You can record, approve, and disapprove content, and start/stop/rewind/fast-forward as much as you please. Hardcore TiVo users will notice that a few buttons have moved around slightly, such as Mute and Guide, but it's all rather minor. We were disappointed that none of the remotes had back-lighting capabilities.

Nathan Mattise

Those familiar with the TiVo box will notice only a slight aesthetic makeover. It's roughly the same size as previous editions: 16.5-inches wide, 9.7 inches long, and 2.4 inches high to weigh in at approximately seven pounds. That's large enough to be noticeably heavier than a Cox cable box while measuring about twice the size. It feels appropriately sturdy, but it still tucks into a pretty modest entertainment center without much hassle. The front loses the Premiere's end-to-end horizontal stripe that contained indicators. Instead, the Roamio has a cosine graph-like design with its indicators tucked within the peaks. There are also two touch buttons—one for power and one for your remote, which we'll explain in a bit.

Spinning the box around, you'll find ports aplenty. The TiVo Roamio supports both HDMI and classic AV components, and each works fine. In addition to the other three necessary connections listed above, there are two USB 2.0 ports and optional connections for digital audio and external storage. The TiVo Roamio also has a fan, though during testing we never experienced any noticeable (read: spaceship-sounding, like early '90s computers) noise.

118 Reader Comments

Streaming out of the home is thus far a bonus. The quality is pretty bad but in a pinch, better than nothing.

Certainly saves you the money of buying a sling box.

The downloads could be useful on a long flight. May end up trying that the next time I board a plane.

The content restrictions are a drag though. No HBO or Showtime shows can be streamed or downloaded. Then again, you would want to watch those shows on the big screen, not on an iPad. And for those, I have HBO Go and Showtime Anywhere, though out of the country you have to do some workarounds to get those to work.

I did pay a hefty price for a Roamio Plus and Tivo Mini, both with lifetime subs. But the double-play deal is going to save me $50-60 a month over 2 years so they'll pay for themselves.

One thing that you missed is that the most basic Roamio includes an Over-The-Air tuner, where as the other 2 models do not! So for cable cutters, the basic unit may be the more ideal choice!

Additionally it is extremely simple to open up the Roamio and put a new hard drive in....I own the basic model (because I wanted the over the air tuner) and installed a 2 TB drive without any issues at all. You just unplug the old one, put the new one in and re-run setup. It's great.

$14/month is $4 more than I pay to rent a PVR from my service provider, not only that it has all the capabilities mentioned in this review with the exception of Netflix (for obvious reasons) and the storage is only 150 hours. At these prices it's hard to justify, the subscription costs more than Netflix.

If you think you're going to keep your TiVo for a long time, there is little reason not to opt for the lifetime service. Sure it is expensive up front, but $500 is just 33 months (2 years and 9 months) of $15/month charges. That is really not that much time. One bonus of a TiVo is that it avoids the monthly charge of the cable company DVR, which makes it cheaper in the long run (although it takes considerably longer to pay off in general) and as a bonus, almost certainly better.

Also, the Comcast guy complaining about the TiVo problems is entirely due to Comcast's stupid architecture. They went out of their way to make external DVRs difficult to use, he doesn't get to complain about it.

Does anyone make a DVR that doesn't require monthly service? Like basically a VCR but with a HDD? Or is your best bet a HTPC?

There are a few out there (ChannelMaster comes to mind), but by all reviews they're not very good both in terms in of performance and features. TiVo really owns the third-party DVR space, but that distinction might be a bit dubious. While I do like their hardware and service, they're lack of Android support and having to be the cable companies' bitch* certainly removes some of the luster from their offerings.

* You need an M-Card from the cable company if you're not only watching OTA programming, and getting them to bring a properly-provisioned card can be a PITA (I went through >30 M-Cards before I told TWC to shove it). Also, the Stream functionality is pretty much worthless if the cable company sets the CCI bit to record once.

Well maybe other DVRs will integrate streaming or downloading to mobile devices from now on.

That's got to be a popular feature, though maybe the content owners will try to kill it, since they'd rather that you pay separately for the same shows on your mobile devices, even if you already pay to have them on your TV.

This seems like an awful lot of money for a tiny amount of added functionality compared to your cable company's DVR. Not to mention, some cable companies already support streaming shows to devices (I know Cablevision does).

This seems like an awful lot of money for a tiny amount of added functionality compared to your cable company's DVR. Not to mention, some cable companies already support streaming shows to devices (I know Cablevision does).

It is a lot of money but Comcast charges $16.95 a month to rent these crappy old Motorola DVRs with 2 tuners and 160 GB storage. People go for it because they don't want to shell out hundreds up front for a Tivo.

Comcast is working on X1 and X2 "cloud DVRs" but the X1 is apparently riddled with bugs, like shows not recording, recordings being deleted, etc. and X2, who knows when they'll roll it out and how reliable it would be.

Still, Tivo is a niche market. They probably depend on the royalty fees for DVR patents, because otherwise, they can't sell enough DVRs at the prices they're asking people to pay.

I'm feeling really old in that I've never felt the desire to watch a tv show when not at home. If I'm not at home I'm generally on the go and don't have access to wifi for streaming let alone stationary long enough for a tv show. And with ever decreasing data caps on phones and other wireless devices I'm not sure how other people stream while actually mobile. I do have a "normal" Tivo now and can't imagine TV without it, but streaming on the go, can't imagine the need.

Article says you had an Ethernet interface was required, but my experience is that they use USB for the TiVo interface.

For those saying "the cable company DVR's do the same things," you may be right from a feature checkbox point of view, but I have no problems with the extra money for the TiVo. TiVo is literally the only piece of technology EVER that my mother used with my only showing her how to do things once. I can't explain how incredible that is. Once you go TiVo, you're not likely to go back to the craptastic cable company DVR's. Also, most cable company DVR's are extremely limited in capacity vs. the TiVo's. My Series 3 from 2006 had more stock hard drive space than most cable company DVR's do today, but I upgraded it to a 1TB drive. With the current TiVo's and multi-TB drives, you are never looking around tryng to figure out what to delete, even when you have every episode of Breaking Bad and Walking Dead in storage along along with a few weeks of misc. TV because you were traveling.

I wish this review covered the use of a Tivo Mini to access the Roamio. For me, that is the potential appeal of the new Tivo hardware: 1 Roamio acting as multi-room DVR plus additional Tivo Minis to replace existing cable boxes. Reports I've seen say that channel-changing on the Tivo Mini is very slow, which is discouraging.

I wish this review covered the use of a Tivo Mini to access the Roamio. For me, that is the potential appeal of the new Tivo hardware: 1 Roamio acting as multi-room DVR plus additional Tivo Minis to replace existing cable boxes. Reports I've seen say that channel-changing on the Tivo Mini is very slow, which is discouraging.

Maybe Ars can do a follow-up exploring this aspect of the product.

I have a Mini. I don't have to pay a mirroring fee or additional room fee to Comcast.

Channel switching is fine but there are some annoyances. For instance, after some time with no input, Mini goes into sleep mode and blanks out the screen. Then there are times when it just pauses live TV after a couple of seconds, which can be remedied by resetting the Mini or just watching a recording for a couple of minutes and then going back to live TV. So a few glitches but it's a relatively good multiroom solution at the cost. I got the lifetime subscription for it but it's kind of BS, since it doesn't do any recording and pulls the programming guide for the Roamio. I think the subscription costs are to offset the subsidized nominal price of $99 though.

Our Tivo HD was very good - we ran it for a lot of years both with cable and later OTA only. It did get unstable in its later years requiring frequent power cycles and such, but we also had a unit on monthly that never had any problems whatsoever and was completely bulletproof - so, just a bit of bad luck.

We moved to an apartment were we can't put up an antenna big enough to get a signal so we're Tivo-less again and just running on Netflix/Hulu and using a Roku and a HTPC with XBMC.

Cable cards are a PITA but a lifetime Tivo sub pays for itself typically in about 3 years. And they are much better DVRs, also. The biggest problem with Cable Cards is that they typically need a truck roll for install (at least Charter did) as they need to activated or something. DRM causing problems, as usual. I notice in your review it was the same for streaming capabilities - thank your cable overlord for the DRM-type limitations.

Wish Tivo was releasing more units with OTA support. I think they'd have more traction in the long run with cord-cutters (it's nice to have a box with OTA and Netflix/Hulu/etc), but they seem more focused on cable-subbing folks.

The perfect box would be a Tivo with all of the Roku's capability/channels.

It's not clear from TiVo's site what these Roamio boxes do with closed captioning. Do they do the right thing and record the signal for the TV (or other downstream device) to manage, or interpret the signal themselves, taking later devices out of the loop?

This seems like an awful lot of money for a tiny amount of added functionality compared to your cable company's DVR. Not to mention, some cable companies already support streaming shows to devices (I know Cablevision does).

I have a Tivo that I use with OTA.

When I did have cable, the UI on the provided box was beyond atrocious. On top of that, it had terrible controls for recording shows (couldn't tell the difference between first airing and repeat, couldn't figure out that your show got bumped 30 minutes because the President gave a speech, wouldn't automatically delete older shows to make room for new shows - it would just stop recording things with no alerts or warnings). Tivo was worth the money for anyone that didn't want to be tortured.

I bought the Roamio basic around 5 weeks ago. I only have OTA (Atlanta broadcast), no cable. Like gothaggis above, I replaced the 500GB hard disk with a 3TB model. You just plug in the new drive and everything is ready to go, after you complete the first time setup once again. That upgrade might not have been necessary. I use kmttg to move stuff off the Tivo into MKV format and move it to my NAS where Plex can access it and view recorded TV through Roku boxes and Plex. It costs $15 a month sure, but it has kept my girlfriend from buying shows from Amazon because my previous Windows Media Center setup was too confusing or sometimes unreliable. I had Aereo for a while too and to get "2 antennas", the cost is only $3 less than a Tivo subscribtion, where I can record 4 things at a time.

It took me a while to come around to paying $15 a month for a Tivo, but what we save from not having to purchase content from Amazon and the ease of use are worth it to me.

I am the owner of an OLD Tivo HD that I upgraded with a 1TB hard drive.

No matter how I think about it, I simply can't justify the price for what I'm getting in regards to upgrading to the latest TIVO.

Honestly, my Roku3, running in conjunction with Plex Media server on a Linux box in another room just about meets ALL of my viewing needs.

The only thing I really would like to have is the local affiliates for NFL football and live stuff. In my situation I'd need a huge freaking pre-amplified antenna on the roof to even have a chance at picking them up (I'm 50 miles south of Washington D.C.)

I am the owner of an OLD Tivo HD that I upgraded with a 1TB hard drive.

No matter how I think about it, I simply can't justify the price for what I'm getting in regards to upgrading to the latest TIVO.

Honestly, my Roku3, running in conjunction with Plex Media server on a Linux box in another room just about meets ALL of my viewing needs.

The only thing I really would like to have is the local affiliates for NFL football and live stuff. In my situation I'd need a huge freaking pre-amplified antenna on the roof to even have a chance at picking them up (I'm 50 miles south of Washington D.C.)

This new Tivo sounds like what I wanted 7 years ago when I got fed up with them and defected to MythTV. Now, it just seems like an outdated way of doing things. Once you've embraced all of the modern streaming options, cable seems like a dinosaur. Cable card complications don't help. Neither does the subscription fee that continues to make Tivos pretty much the most expensive option out there.

At best, a good PVR is going to turn the crappy interface of cable into something like Netflix or Amazon streaming.

I am the owner of an OLD Tivo HD that I upgraded with a 1TB hard drive.

No matter how I think about it, I simply can't justify the price for what I'm getting in regards to upgrading to the latest TIVO.

I upgraded my Tivo HD in the same fashion, and it continues to meet my needs. I expect that when it finally dies, I would get the latest iteration of the Tivo hardware at that time.

As to the other comments about Comcast, I have Comcast cable, and had absolutely no problems getting my Tivo HD going, nor have there been any issues over time, other than complete or partial cable outages. I expect that since Comcast is an agglomeration of many smaller cable companies, certain regions have more trouble than others due to legacy cable plants.

$14/month is $4 more than I pay to rent a PVR from my service provider, not only that it has all the capabilities mentioned in this review with the exception of Netflix (for obvious reasons) and the storage is only 150 hours. At these prices it's hard to justify, the subscription costs more than Netflix.

Big benefit is when cable starts to jack your prices up you can cut the cord and keep your box and your recordings to watch. If you have the basic box and an OTA antenna then you still get the network shows. A few months later when new shows start to come out you can get back in at the 'new user' price and then record all the shows you missed when the re-runs come on.

Comparing to netflix, it doesn't get a lot of shows, but you can pre-record new shows/series and save them with TIVO to watch later (if you find they are worthwhile).

I just spoke to verizon who told me that I would lose 30% of my channels if I switched from their FIOS DVR to Cablecard - that cant be true, can it?

I don't know about your service, but I have a TiVo with my FiOS service and we get every channel we pay for. We have one of the lower end plans though, maybe some of the premium channels aren't supported? What you do miss out on is the outrageously overpriced PPV and VOD options. Every time I see an ad for the PPV of the month, it's always advertising the absolute worst movie from 2 or 3 months ago, so I don't consider it a big loss.

I'm a huge TiVo fan. I've had one for over ten years now. I'm suffering from massive sticker shock with the Roamio boxes. They are *really* expensive, especially for the product lifetime service. $500?!? You have to be kidding me.

When you're talking a minimum of $700 out of pocket for a new TiVo, it starts to look a whole lot less attractive. As a comparison, five or six years ago they offered people the chance to transfer their lifetime service to a new box for around $300, and that included a new TiVo box.

I've thought in the past and continue to think that TiVo really dropped the ball. They had a chance to basically corner the DVR market by figuring out a way to produce a quality product for a little less money. Instead, their hardware has pretty much stunk for the past six or seven years. By most accounts, the Roamio line solves this problem, but at a massive, massive expense. I just can't justify that kind of money.

I spent a whopping $99 (one time) on my Roku box 3 years ago and I use that with my Netflix ($8/mo.) and Amazon Prime (less than $7 a month) accounts for all my TV needs. No cable TV, but cable internet. And there's my Chromecast ($35) for current non-cable shows. Anything else I want to watch I can usually find uploaded on YouTube.

If I want to watch my content away from home, the Chromecast is portable and plugs in to a hotel TV. I can Cast everything from my iPod or my laptop to the TV.

All that, and I watch maybe 3 hours a day, except during NaNoWriMo (the TV hasn't been turned on in over a week). I don't need to record anything, because Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube will have it when I want to watch it.

All that pricey cable gobbledygook and recordy gadgets may be worth it for some, but I doubt I'll ever go back.

Over the course of three years (the minimum length of time I expect to use a Roamio), I'll pay $1,206 for Cox's Contour service, and $1,048 for TiVo and cable card on the $15/mo plan, or $972 if I pay up front for lifetime.

Want to know how normal "cord cutting" is these days? Here's a peek behind the Ars Orbiting HQ curtain: when we decided we wanted to review the new line of TiVo DVRs—called Roamio—after the company's fall announcement, we hit a bit of a snag. Out of the entire Ars staff, only four of us had current cable subscriptions.

Can you blame us? It's easier than ever to lose that relationship with Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, or the local monopoly cable company. You can opt for a Roku, a Boxee, an Apple TV, or maybe something a little risqué like Aereo. And even if you don't want a dedicated piece of hardware, all laptops, desktops, and mobile devices can become your "TV" through the endless amount of streaming content apps.

I'm hesitant to call "bullshit" on this, but my recent experience with trying to cord cut leads me to believe that there's a lot of hype attached to it.

I'm with Verizon and my plan was up for renewal. It's a FiOS plan with 15/5 internet and the 2nd tier HD package (4 being the highest). With discounts, I'm paying about $87 a month. A DVR and set-top box for the old TV brings that to about $111. Yearly is about $1337.

Reading about how so many people are saving tons of cash by cord cutting, I started researching the costs involved. The big problem I ran into is that, at least in South Jersey, the two major players (Comcast and Verizon) seriously jack up their internet-only plans.

Verizon jumps to $70 a month for 15/5 internet only. Comcast has a $30 a month plan, but that only is good for two years. After that, it's $65 a month.

Once I factored in things like Hulu and TiVO subscriptions, I was either spending the same per year, or saving like $15 a month. Any savings is good, but it doesn't seem worth it, given all of the hoops we'd have to jump through to watch the stuff we watch now.

I think the key here is that, at least in this area, the lack of competition is keeping internet-only prices high. I also think that the big boys are getting hip to the cord cutters, and are pricing their wares accordingly.

Another key is perhaps that, unlike many people, we were cutting our plan to the bone to begin with: no pay-per-view, no HBO, no excess HD package, etc. Compared to other friends and family, our bill was low to begin with.

I absolutely would love to cord cut, but in the Philly/South Jersey area, it's going to take someone like Google to come in and really disrupt everything. If you can get a decent, cheap internet-only connection, I think cord cutting makes total sense. My experience is that those plans are harder to come by than people think.

Still, Tivo is a niche market. They probably depend on the royalty fees for DVR patents, because otherwise, they can't sell enough DVRs at the prices they're asking people to pay.

From what I understand, beyond patent licensing, their revenue stream is primarily from cable operators, not end users. There's a fairly small number of operators in the US using their platform, but e.g., Virgin Media in the UK has done a huge rollout over there. That sadly explains some of their end user pricing -- as I understand it, they're under some pressure to not make their service fees significantly less than the prices cable operators charge to rent them out.

That said, if your cable provider (RCN is the biggest in the US, I believe, but not the only one) happens to offer TiVo boxes, it's typically not a bad deal. RCN hasn't rolled out the Roamio yet, but they've been offering a four-tuner Premiere (roughly equivalent to the Roamio Plus, which I'm guessing they'll offer at the same price) for $25/month inclusive of TiVo service. Given that box+LTS on a Roamio Plus is ~$750 even with special offers, you're looking at a fairly reasonable 30 month break-even.

On the other hand, I'm still using the Tivo HD I bought in 2008, so the box can definitely be the better deal. I think I paid about $550 with LT service, bringing my cost to less than $10/mo (plus the cable card).

Our Tivo HD was very good - we ran it for a lot of years both with cable and later OTA only. It did get unstable in its later years requiring frequent power cycles and such, but we also had a unit on monthly that never had any problems whatsoever and was completely bulletproof - so, just a bit of bad luck.

The TiVo HD shipped in the "bad capacitor" era -- a lot of them had power supply issues due to failed caps.

When you're talking a minimum of $700 out of pocket for a new TiVo, it starts to look a whole lot less attractive. As a comparison, five or six years ago they offered people the chance to transfer their lifetime service to a new box for around $300, and that included a new TiVo box.

They have rarely run deals on brand-new models. Those deals you mention popped up when the boxes were at least a year old. They're just starting to offer some bargains on Roamios now.

TiVos with lifetime service also have pretty good resale value, especially if you've upgraded the drive.

When you're talking a minimum of $700 out of pocket for a new TiVo, it starts to look a whole lot less attractive. As a comparison, five or six years ago they offered people the chance to transfer their lifetime service to a new box for around $300, and that included a new TiVo box.

They have rarely run deals on brand-new models. Those deals you mention popped up when the boxes were at least a year old. They're just starting to offer some bargains on Roamios now.

TiVos with lifetime service also have pretty good resale value, especially if you've upgraded the drive.

Fair enough, but the lifetime service has gone up a full 100% since I last paid for it. I paid $250 for it a decade ago. Sure, the hardware is more capable than ever, but why is the service getting more expensive for the same product?

Also, why can't I just buy my own Cablecard instead of having to "rent" it from the cable company? What an effing racket. I hate the FCC.

I just spoke to verizon who told me that I would lose 30% of my channels if I switched from their FIOS DVR to Cablecard - that cant be true, can it?

It depends. What you WILL lose is access to all the on-demand/pay-per-view stuff. However, given that you're on this website, the chances you do use that is slim to none, and thus no, you're not going to lose anything at all. If anyone says otherwise to you, they are misinformed or FUDing.

I'm still a cable subscriber only because my cable company is my only available choice for an ISP. And despite having a cable company provided DVR, I rarely use it. It's just so much easier to find shows I missed via other means. In order for me to consider buying a DVR, it would really need 3 options that my old ReplayTV unit had but Tivo still doesn't: 1) The ability to save shows from the DVR to my PC (not streaming, but the ability to actually save a file in an editible format), 2) the ability to automatically skip commercials, and 3) A reasonable purchase price and no monthly or lifetime fee.

Nathan, thanks for a very informative article; I very much appreciated it, as I've been wondering about changing our set up for a while, in large part because of the current lack of out-of-home streaming. Based on what you've said, however, it seems that I'm sticking to it.

I have a Window 7 Pro machine (total cost about $300, and it's a mid-range SNB-based machine) and a HD HomeRun Prime ($150) with a Verizon CableCard in it. I pay no monthly fees except to Verizon, of which $4 is for the CableCard. We, of course, can also watch anything else on the internet.

The out-of-home streaming was the main thing I was interested in, and it seems to me the better option would be either to wait for Slingbox to accept streaming from HDMI sources, or find an older composite-out WMC extender. If we didn't live in the northeast and pay northeast power rates, I suppose repurposing an Xbox 360 would have been an option too. As it stands, I guess we'll continue to rely on CouchPotato for the infrequent times we need to see something out of the home.